Jen Bramson -  a specialized paraeducator, union activist, and NEA’s 2024 NEA Education Support Professional (ESP) of the Year. Since 2013, Jen has worked for Park City School District in Park City, Utah, teaching preschool at McPolin Elementary School, a Title 1 school with a diverse student population, a dual language program of Spanish and English, and strong community involvement.  She takes great pride in helping English learners and students with disabilities or behavioral challenges overcome their challenges and succeed just as she did.  

Joel Truesdell— a retired high school chemistry teacher who successfully used Hawaiian culture as a basis for teaching and learning in his classroom. His indoor classroom was a “standard chemistry room with lab benches and a fume hood.” The outdoor classroom was potting and staging area for growing seedlings for a Hawaiian reforestation as well as the forest itself.

Keith Ballard — a 29-year veteran music educator at both the middle- and high-school levels who teaches in “one of the lowest-performing academic schools in California.” He successfully reaches and engages his students through multicultural music genres, creating two programs — a mariachi band and steel drum band.

 Keishia Thorpe — a 20-year veteran English success coach who teaches in 9th and 12th grades in Title 1 schools, she found athletics her ticket out of a poor area of her native country to become a first-generation college student in the United States. She won the Global Teacher Prize in 2021 and is currently serving as a high school assistant principal.

Shelly Moore Krajacic - A 23-year veteran who teaches high school English language arts. Her well-planned path to become an attorney ended when she first her student-teaching classroom. She works to give that experience to her own students: “It is my obligation to see my students in ways they have never seen themselves. I need to see possibilities in them that they never knew existed and to help them believe in themselves enough to discover pathways to those possibilities."

Terry Kaldhusdal - A 30-year veteran sixth-grade history teacher whose goal is for students is to think like a historian; he believes that those critical thinking skills will give his students the tools they need to succeed across their curriculum and throughout life. To demonstrate their learning, his students have created documentaries, plays and websites; their documentary films have been shown in several states and several film festivals. This teacher has also produced six documentaries which aired more than 600 times on PBS stations across the country, earning one Emmy nomination.